Phil Worms, iomart’s director of corporate communications asks can virtualisation meet the hype?

Let me give you three words that sum up  2008, ‘Barak’, ‘Crunch’ and ‘Virtualisation’.

The first two are fairly self evident but the third one is less obvious. Is server virtualisation - a technique of running multiple combinations of applications and operating systems on a single computer - set for a glittering future or is it merely this year’s buzz? Gartner is predicting it will become the most disruptive technology of the next decade. Which is an odd description as the actual deployment of virtual infrastructure is non-disruptive since the user experiences remain unchanged. Never the less the firm has chosen the technology as one of the top ten strategic technologies for 2009. It estimates that approximately 10 % of today’s x86 server workloads are running in virtual machines, but that this will grow to nearer 61% by 2013.

IDC state that desktop virtualisation provides firms with the opportunity to solve potential problems including growing reliance on offshore employees, new security threats, and spiralling management, support, and maintenance costs.

And even more recently, technology consultancy Interphase Systems, claimed virtualisation will become increasingly popular with firms looking to update their disaster recovery provision.

So are they right? Will virtualisation really solve as many technology headaches as they think? Will we really see over four million virtual systems operating around the world by the end of next year?

The short answer must be that virtualisation has ‘the potential’ to deliver benefits to IT departments, but we can’t just wave  a ‘virtualised wand’ and all will be well in the data centre. The introduction of virtualisation into any environment will require careful planning.

Rather than being one-size-fits-all, virtualisation must address the unique goals and resources of each organisation that implements the strategy. CIOs must be very clear about what they expect virtualisation to deliver. Do they want to fewer physical servers, a rationalisation of their hardware, cuts in power consumption, disaster recovery benefits or a combination of these objectives? The end game must be defined.

For example, it is vital to avoid the two configuration extremes: Underpowered virtual servers fail to meet an organisation’s processing needs, and over-engineered systems waste money, thereby diluting any potential cost savings. There is a real potential for server sprawl to occur with a badly planned and implemented virtualisation project.

Virtualisation doesn’t work for all applications. To determine which programs are right, CIOs should identify their relative importance to the organisation, their processing requirements and their staff’s expertise. Organisations should think twice about virtualising applications with intensive input/output demands, such as high-end databases and mail servers. Good virtualisation candidates include applications that require the least maintenance and draw relatively low amounts of server CPU and memory resources.

The importance of having a high level of virtualisation skills and expertise available within the IT department cannot be over stressed. Staff may feel exposed with the new virtual way of working. Network engineers, for example, may need to swap traditional hardware, such as network switches for software equivalents, and this may lead to a feeling of loss of control as security crosses to system administrators. Job realignment needs to be carefully managed.

So which vendor to use? The current market leader VM Ware is being challenged by  software providers like Citrix, Microsoft, Virtual Iron and Parallels all offering different packages. Again CIOs must determine what is right for the organisation. A balance should be struck between vendors offering comprehensive features and compatibility testing with ease of management and licensing costs.

Finally there are two more areas to be addressed. The first is storage and the second is plan for feature and functionality growth – particularly the addition of tools to the virtualisation platform.

The advice here is to avoid changing servers and storage simultaneously as its too risky. Plan to have the storage platform in place before consolidating the servers. On the second issue, CIOs must be prepared to add new tools to the platform as they become available. Upgrades and products are released regularly so be prepared.

There can be no doubt that virtualisation does offer IT departments the potential to reduce data centre costs and improve efficiency but its introduction must be well planned and executed.